


Not Ideal Working Conditions

by TouchingOldMagic



Series: Ghostbusters 30 Day Challenge [13]
Category: Ghostbusters (Comics), Ghostbusters - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Missing Scene, New Ghostbusters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-20
Updated: 2020-06-20
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:55:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24833452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TouchingOldMagic/pseuds/TouchingOldMagic
Summary: Day 13 of the Ghostbusters 30 Day ChallengePrompt: Alternate UniformsKylie feels the stress of the nonstop search for the missing Ghostbusters, and the new uniforms weren't helping.
Series: Ghostbusters 30 Day Challenge [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1779643
Kudos: 8





	Not Ideal Working Conditions

**Author's Note:**

> Well this prompt stumped me for a while, but finally came up with this. Takes place during the New Ghostbusters storyarc of the comics, where the guys go missing.

Kylie hadn't thought the photos from the shoot could possibly be processed so fast. And yet there it was, staring up at her from the cover of a magazine on Janine's desk. She inwardly cringed at her own smiling face.

Feeling the urge to twist the proverbial knife in the wound, she flipped open the magazine to the featured article, which included other photos from the shoot. The peppy title, New Ghostbusters!, sat at the top of the page in a lightning bolt font. The uniforms for herself, Janine, and Mel were tight across the chest and the shorts were barely mid-thigh. There were photos of herself alone, the three new "lady 'Busters" (sigh), and the four of them together posing with the equipment. In most of them she was smiling brightly.

"I feel like a tool," Kylie muttered.

Janine blew on her cup of tea before taking a sip. "Don't let it get to you too much, kiddo," she said, "It's just business."

(Kylie accepted the moniker of 'kid' and 'kiddo' with as much silent grace as she could. She didn't have much of a choice, since over half the employees of Ghostbusters Inc. had decided that would be her nickname.)

Janine added darkly, "And it WON'T be happening again."

One of the photos even included Pagan. Kylie couldn't imagine why the photographer had decided to do that, and yet there it was.

At the shoot, she had asked. "Cats are great!" the photographer had insisted. "Haven't you ever seen an author photo on the back of a book jacket? They always have a cat in their lap! So photogenic. Trust me, someday media is going to be all cats, all the time."

Kylie had assumed he was nuts and it wouldn't make the final cut. But there it was. Her cat, immortalized in a monthly publication for all of New York to see.

She didn't particularly like the media attention, but she wouldn't have objected to it as much if they had been presented in a serious manner. But the photos were just silly, and that rankled under her skin. The photographers had posed them like life-sized dolls, like a comedy troupe, not a legit business. That had been Jack Hardemeyer's plan. The guys were the face of the business, he had told them. Without them around, the company needed to get attention. Make the people like you. Make it seem like you were approachable, personable.

Kylie didn't think it looked like they were approachable, they looked like they were a joke.

The only reason she put up with it was because everyone, from Janine to Peck, insisted that this was the only way to continue doing her research into what had happened to the guys. It was a worry she dealt with every day, and it had been for the past three months.

She couldn't rest, couldn't let her mind take a break, because she was the only one who could _do_ something about it. And so she sat in the bookstore with the CLOSED sign on the door just so she could pour through every book on the shelves and dump them in piles on the floor--they just couldn't be dead there were no _bodies_ and all four disappeared at the same time and Melanie had seen the one that had grabbed Dr. Venkman so if she could just find the right passage in the right book it would tell her what to do--

"Whoa, kiddo? Kylie?" Janine's hand on her arm snapped her back to the present. "Are you okay?"

"Sorry." Kylie stretched her lips into a smile that hopefully didn't look as exhausted as she felt. "I'm fine. It just all caught up with me for a second. All the research, and the--" She didn't want to admit how little she had been sleeping lately, leaving the bookstore late at night and once dozing off there until morning. "And then those uniforms and the photo shoot didn't help."

Janine stared at her a moment more, blue eyes narrowed, then released her arm. "Take a lunch break, hon. Get out of here for an hour."

Kylie frowned. "Mel's already out on lunch right now, and who knows where Alexander is."

Janine waved a hand to cut her off. "Like I never handled the phones by myself before. Go, get. Take a walk, get some air." She leveled a manicured nail at Kylie in a threatening pose. "DON'T read a book. Get some food or an ice cream or something."

Unable to help herself, Kylie chuckled. "All right. Thanks." She went to get her purse.

Janine gave a soft sigh. "Don't mention it."


End file.
